Part 7 (1/2)
”We have but two or three miles to go,” interrupted Mrs. Wrandall.
”We must think hard and--rapidly. Are you willing to come with me to my hotel? You will be safe there for the present. To-morrow we can plan something for the future.”
”If I can only find a place to rest for a little while,” began the other.
”I shall be busy all day, you will not be disturbed. But leave the rest to me. I shall find a way.”
It was nearly three o'clock when she brought the car to a stop in front of a small, exclusive hotel not far from Central Park. The street was dark and the vestibule was but dimly lighted. No attendant was in sight.
”Slip into this,” commanded Mrs. Wrandall, beginning to divest herself of her own fur coat. ”It will cover your muddy garments. I am quite warmly dressed. Don't worry. Be quick. For the time being you are my guest here. You will not be questioned. No one need know who you are. It will not matter if you look distressed. You have just heard of the dreadful thing that has happened to me. You--”
”Happened to you?” cried the girl, drawing the coat about her.
”A member of my family has died. They know it in the hotel by this time. I was called to the death bed--to-night. That is all you will have to know.”
”Oh, I am sorry--”
”Come, let us go in. When we reach my rooms, you may order food and drink. You must do it, not I. Please try to remember that it is I who am suffering, not you.”
A sleepy night watchman took them up in the elevator. He was not even interested. Mrs. Wrandall did not speak, but leaned rather heavily on the arm of her companion. The door had no sooner closed behind them when the girl collapsed. She sank to the floor in a heap.
”Get up!” commanded her hostess sharply. This was not the time for soft, persuasive words. ”Get up at once. You are young and strong.
You must show the stuff you are made of now if you ever mean to show it. I cannot help you if you quail.”
The girl looked up piteously, and then struggled to her feet. She stood before her protectress, weaving like a frail reed in the wind, pallid to the lips.
”I beg your pardon,” she murmured. ”I will not give way like that again. I dare say I'm faint. I have had no food, no rest--but never mind that now. Tell me what I am to do. I will try to obey.”
”First of all, get out of those muddy, frozen things you have on.”
Mrs. Wrandall herself moved stiffly and with unsteady limbs as she began to remove her own outer garments. The girl mechanically followed her example. She was a pitiable object in the strong light of the electrolier. Muddy from head to foot, water-stained and bedraggled, her face streaked with dirt, she was the most unattractive creature one could well imagine.
These women, so strangely thrown together by Fate, maintained an unbroken silence during the long, fumbling process of partial disrobing. They scarcely looked at one another, and yet they were acutely conscious of the interest each felt in the other. The grateful warmth of the room, the abrupt transition from gloom and cheerlessness to comfortable obscurity, had a more p.r.o.nounced effect on the stranger than on her hostess.
”It is good to feel warm once more,” she said, an odd timidness in her manner. ”You are very good to me.”
They were in Mrs. Wrandall's bed-chamber, just off the little sitting-room. Three or four trunks stood against the walls.
”I dismissed my maid on landing. She robbed me,” said Mrs. Wrandall, voicing the relief that was uppermost in her mind. She opened a closet door and took out a thick eider-down robe, which she tossed across a chair. ”Now call up the office and say that you are speaking for me. Say to them that I must have something to eat, no matter what the hour may be. I will get out some clean underwear for you, and--Oh, yes; if they ask about me, say that I am cold and ill.
That is sufficient. Here is the bath. Please be as quick about it as possible.”
Moving as if in a dream, the girl did as she was told. Twenty minutes later there was a knock at the door. A waiter appeared with a tray and service table. He found Mrs. Wrandall lying back in a chair, attended by a slender young woman in a pink eiderdown dressing-gown, who gave hesitating directions to him. Then he was dismissed with a handsome tip, produced by the same young woman.
”You are not to return for these things,” she said as he went out.
In silence she ate and drank, her hostess looking on with gloomy interest. It was no shock to Mrs. Wrandall to find that the girl, who was no more than twenty-two or three, possessed unusual beauty.
Her great eyes were blue,--the lovely Irish blue,--her skin was fair and smooth, her features regular and of the delicate mould that defines the well-bred gentlewoman at a glance. Her hair, now in order, was dark and thick and lay softly about her small ears and neck. She was not surprised, I repeat, for she had never known Challis Wrandall to show interest in any but the most attractive of her s.e.x. She found herself smiling bitterly as she looked.
To herself she was saying: ”It isn't so hard to bear when I realise that he betrayed me for one who is so much more beautiful than I.
He loved me because I am beautiful. His every defection proves it.